Are you ready to give Microsoft’s energy management tool Hohm a spin? On Monday morning at 6 a.m. (pacific time) Microsoft is opening up the doors on Hohm to the general public, about two weeks after the software giant revealed the idea behind its energy management tool. Hohm, which will enable home owners to track their energy consumption and potentially modify their energy behavior in a variety of ways, is in beta mode, and Microsoft told us it will be tweaking the software — making it smarter — according to user feedback. So here’s your first chance to give it a whirl and tell ‘em what you really think.
We checked out the tool this weekend pre-launch, and here are my first impressions. Hohm can use as little information as a ZIP code to start predicting your energy consumption, and then the more questions (up to 180) you answer about your residence (like the numbers of doors and windows and type of water heating technology), the more accurate the tool can be. Down the road, the goal is to have the tool link with your utility, integrating your real historical energy data, and then ultimately work with smart meters and other smart devices to provide closer to real-time energy data consumption data.
Using just my ZIP code, those prediction algorithms, licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, are not so bad — Hohm predicted around $750 in annual heating costs per year, and $2,000 in total energy costs, which sounds a little high, but close to the annual bill of my house. And when I answered more questions (about 30 percent of my profile), the energy consumption dropped a bit, i.e., got smarter.
via Feedback Wanted: Microsoft’s Energy Tool Hohm Goes Live | Reuters.
Related posts:
- Hohm: Microsoft Gets Into the Energy Business
- Xcel partners with Microsoft on energy-use tracking tool – Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:
- Microsoft launches free smart home energy monitor
- Microsoft wants your Hohm to use the smart grid – Ars Technica
- CHEAT SHEET: Google-Microsoft Energy Smackdown, PowerMeter vs. Hohm
